How to get a proper Firefox History view?

Question

I have noticed that unlike in other browsers, in Firefox there is no proper History view as such, because the only way to get a history in the right order is to set it on Most Recent Viewed (if you go Menu > History > Show All History) but that still means that if at 17:45 I go to askubuntu.com, then if I go there again at 18:55 I will never be able to see at what time previously I went there.

And I will only be able to see the last time I went to that page, now for some (although I don't know how) this might be more efficient in some way or just better, but for me it really is not, so is there a way of viewing the full history properly where I can see all the times that I have gone to the same page and not just the most recent? Or is this a feature which I will have to request in Firefox (Google Chrome has this feature)?

Just to clarify: I want to make it so that each visit to each individual page gets a new individual entry in the history view instead of it overriding the previous entry about me visiting that page.

OS Information:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 15.04
Release:    15.04
Codename:   vivid
Flavour: GNOME
GNOME Version: 3.16

Package Information:

firefox:
  Installed: 40.0.3+build1-0ubuntu0.15.04.1
  Candidate: 40.0.3+build1-0ubuntu0.15.04.1
  Version table:
 *** 40.0.3+build1-0ubuntu0.15.04.1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid-updates/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid-security/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     37.0+build2-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid/main amd64 Packages

possible duplicate of Getting internet browsing history from shell — A.B., Sep 07 '15 at 19:50
@A.B.: Even though the answer there answers this question, this question is definitely not a duplicate of that one. — , Sep 07 '15 at 20:01

RPiAwesomeness · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-14T17:06:32.287

5

According to this mozillazine page the history for the browser is stored in places.sqlite file in the profiles folder (.mozilla/firefox/ on Ubuntu.)

So, I pulled that file up and took a look at the tables within the database. Within the moz_places table there is a column last_visit_date which provides you with an Unix time/Epoch time number.

However, there are no other columns that provide a number for initial visit and thus no way to provide a true browser history other than the one that Firefox themselves provide.

TL;DR: As far as I can tell by looking at the Firefox SQLite files, there is no way to get a full history other than the one the browser provides.

EDIT: I have created a basic Firefox addon that will write the date & time (in Unix/Epoch format) along with the page title and page URL to the firefoxHistory file in your home directory.

The code is available on this github gist.

edited Sep 14 '15 at 17:06

answered Sep 07 '15 at 19:34

RPiAwesomeness

9,783

I will suggest it to them then. :) – Sep 07 '15 at 19:35
@ParanoidPanda Probably your bets bet. I'm looking into creating a simple FF addon that can do this, but I'm not sure if it's still possible. – RPiAwesomeness Sep 07 '15 at 19:36
When you can please post that extension you made to make it work. :) – Sep 13 '15 at 11:48
@ParanoidPanda Sorry I took so long, I was busy. Here is a download link. I've also updated my answer with the source code for the addon, so you can build it for yourself if you want to! – RPiAwesomeness Sep 14 '15 at 17:04

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

As I wrote already here for Firefox and Google Chrome, here the part for Firefox:

The history can be found in a database table in places.sqlite in SQLite format 3:

$ file ~/.mozilla/firefox/rsbxl7fx.default/places.sqlite
~/.mozilla/firefox/rsbxl7fx.default/places.sqlite: SQLite 3.x database, user version 26

rsbxl7fx.default

Depending on your profile

To view the history you need to install sqlite3:

sudo apt-get install sqlite3

Start sqlite3 with

sqlite3 ~/.mozilla/firefox/rsbxl7fx.default/places.sqlite

and list eg. all tables:

sqlite> .tables
moz_anno_attributes  moz_favicons         moz_items_annos    
moz_annos            moz_historyvisits    moz_keywords       
moz_bookmarks        moz_hosts            moz_places         
moz_bookmarks_roots  moz_inputhistory

Or the history with:

sqlite> SELECT datetime(a.visit_date/1000000,'unixepoch') AS visit_date, b.url FROM moz_historyvisits AS a JOIN moz_places AS b ON a.place_id=b.id WHERE 1 ORDER BY a.visit_date ASC;

Alternatively, a GUI may be used:

sqlitebrowser

sudo apt-get install sqlitebrowser

and start with:

sqlitebrowser ~/.mozilla/firefox/rsbxl7fx.default/places.sqlite

sqliteman

sudo apt-get install sqliteman

and start with:

sqliteman ~/.mozilla/firefox/rsbxl7fx.default/places.sqlite

Note this still only provides the most recent visit date, not the original date. — RPiAwesomeness, Sep 07 '15 at 20:32
@RPiAwesomeness: When you say date, is time included? Or is it just the date? Like it only keeps the records for one day kind of thing? — , Sep 08 '15 at 20:06
@ParanoidPanda It's a Unix/Epoch time number, so yes. It's date/time in UTC based off the number of seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on Thursday, January 1st, 1970. — RPiAwesomeness, Sep 08 '15 at 20:54
@RPiAwesomeness no, this sql must show every visit to every url. i used similar sql and it works. (i used a ff addon to open sqlite). — qdinar, Nov 27 '19 at 17:29

How to get a proper Firefox History view?

2 Answers2